How would Trump’s hardcore supporters react to the removal of their president for a high crime or misdemeanor that fell somewhat short of a triple ax murder? Not with equanimity, you can be assured. Does that matter? Maybe not. But the “civil war” cited in the New Yorker article was not of armies marching across fields, but of civil unrest — a lot of angry people causing a lot of mayhem.

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The problem, Cohen explains, is that if Trump were to be impeached, it would not be for something as black and white as Richard Nixon recording himself confessing to a crime and then trying to hide it. It would be "fuzzy, complicated - amenable to a tweetable defense." Unless the case against Trump is absolute, Cohen suggests, his supporters would riot in the streets:

In a speech last week, Arthur Eisenberg, the legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, warned, “There should be no impeachment unless the case for impeachment were overwhelming.” If that were not the case, he went on, “Trump’s supporters would feel that they were deprived of their electoral victory.”

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Electoral victory? You mean the one where they needed massive voter suppression, Russian interference, the FBI and 24/7 coverage of Hillary's emails just to squeak out an Electoral College win by 75,000 votes while losing the popular vote by 3 million? It's funny that no one seemed all that concerned about Hillary supporters feeling deprived of their electoral victory....

What we're seeing here is the first steps of normalizing the coming right wing violence that will follow Trump's departure. Whether he quits, is impeached, keels over from a heart attack or just loses in 2020, the right will become violent because they thought it was over. They'd won and now they'd keep control forever. No more political correctness. No more Democratic presidents. No more attacks on "real" America. Just oceans of liberal tears as far as the eye could see.

When they realize that their white utopia is not coming and that America will not be rounding up and deporting all of Those People, they're going to do what white people always do when threatened by any kind of racial equality: Get organized and get really really violent. The Civil War, the KKK, Jim Crow, lynchings, the burning of Black Wall Street, the "War on Drugs", mass incarceration, even the election of Donald Trump all stemmed from white resentment that black people were slipping out from under the boot of white supremacy for even a second.

Trump is the purest expression of white supremacy in modern times and losing him will terrify his supporters almost as much as the election of a black man did in 2008. If their Great White Hope can be removed, then all white people must be in danger! Remember, the white nationalist movement has popularized the myth of "white genocide" that claims there is a plan (led by The Jewish Global Conspiracy™) to wipe out the white race. However Trump leaves, short of serving two full terms (and possibly not even that), will be seen as an "attack" on white people and they will act accordingly. In that, Cohen is right, but that cannot be a consideration. Ever.

What are we supposed to do? Only pick presidents that get the alt-right seal of approval?

Ready for 2024! Now with 100% more white nationalism!

During the 2016 election, I cautioned repeatedly that if Hillary won, there would be a surge of violence. Looking at the surge that occurred when Trump won, I'm more convinced than ever that we are on the brink of mass domestic terrorism. Decades of eliminationist rhetoric from Republicans, Fox News, AM Hate Radio and right wing websites has bred a movement of monsters waiting for the slightest provocation to wage war on their imaginary enemies. The second they realize they didn't succeed in overthrowing the Constitution and installing a fascist ethnostate, they're going to go to war.

Assholes like Cohen are laying the groundwork for the wave of apologists that are going to crawl out of the woodwork to divert the blame from the right. They'll blame it on Trump. They'll blame it on the alt-right. They'll blame it on Breitbart. They'll blame it on Hillary and Obama. But they built this and it's time they were held accountable for it. The last time the monsters from the right came out, they blew up a building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people, including 19 children and three pregnant women. How many will they kill when they get loose this time?

Trump has to go because he's a danger to the entire world. When his supporters turn violent, and they will, we have to be ready to put them down like the rabid animals they are and rub the noses of the GOP and their professional deniers like Cohen in the "American carnage" they instigated. We set half the world on fire when foreign terrorists hit us at home, the least we can do is punish the people encouraging domestic terrorism by forcing them to take ownership of it.